As Gaza becomes hungry, UNRWA warehouses stand empty amid Israeli closures

The UNRWA warehouse complex in southern Gaza, which used to serve as the first stop for aid trucks entering the enclave through the Kerem Shalom crossing to trickle through to a devastated population, is now silent. 

Pallets of food, mattresses, and hygiene kits that once filled the cavernous, two-storey warehouses to bursting in the earlier months of the 18-month war, are gone. Forklifts that previously struggled to manoeuvre through tightly stacked aid are idle. Dozens of UN-marked trucks remain parked outside, unused, due to the near-total halt of aid flow into Gaza since the closure of key crossings in early March.

UNRWA, the key entity providing essential support to some 2.1 million people in Gaza, invited journalists on Wednesday to visit three of its southern Gaza warehouses—in Khan Younis, Al-Zawayda, and along Salah al-Din Road— to visibly document the vacuum. At all three sites, the echoes bouncing off the walls of the vacant building, prove that supplies had run out weeks ago. At Khan Younis, only a few UN vehicles remained operational, mostly to support administration.

The centre once hosted tens of thousands of displaced people when Israeli bombardments first forced mass evacuations in October 2023. But following Israel's ground operation in Khan Younis in December and January that year, the compound was evacuated and has since been refurbished by UNRWA—with repaired fences, power generators, and a small water well—but remains off-limits to civilians.

Today, only UN staff and security remain inside. Outside the compound, displaced families still camp nearby, including many who once sheltered within its walls. But the once-bustling hub of humanitarian logistics has fallen eerily silent.

The 50-day blocking of all supplies by Israeli authorities "resulted in the worst humanitarian crisis in the Strip since October 2023," UNRWA said in a statement it shared after the tour.

"Since early March, not a single truck carrying food, fuel, medicine, or other essentials has been allowed to enter, no matter how vital they are to people's survival," it added.

"This is the longest period of aid blockade since the beginning of the conflict," said the statement. "Children and adults are suffering from hunger, and access to healthcare is deteriorating. Food stocks are dangerously depleted, and rations have been cut. Vital medicines, vaccines, and medical supplies are all in short supply. UNRWA has run out of flour and has only 250 food parcels left."

Empty shelves, empty stomachs

The lack of humanitarian supplies is rippling across displacement camps. Ahmad Sheikh Al-Eid, 68, now living in a tent near the Khan Younis training centre, describes how his family—spanning 20 children and dozens of grandchildren—now survives on one or two sparse meals a day, if at all.

He was last able to obtain flour nearly two months ago. Since then, the family has rationed meals and grown herbs and vegetables in makeshift garden plots next to their tents, hoping to extend what little they have. On the day of our visit, he pounded dried chilli peppers and salt in a clay bowl, awaiting a promised delivery of bread from a communal kitchen, or takiya.

"I used to share a loaf of bread with my grandchildren," he said. "Now I divide one for myself across two days."

Sheikh Al-Eid lost 15 family members—including sons, daughters-in-law, and grandchildren—in two separate airstrikes on Rafah in October 2023. He returned to Khan Younis in January following a short-lived truce but says the hunger now spreading through the camps is "worse than the bombing."

"There's nothing in the markets, and what is available is unaffordable. We eat whatever we can—usually canned beans or chickpeas. Meat, fruit, vegetables—they're gone. Tea, if we have it, feels like a luxury."

His neighbour, Ala' al-Sana', 42, echoed the same. Living across from the very warehouse that once held daily deliveries, he hasn't received aid in over two months. "We rely entirely on the takiya now. If they cook, we eat. If they don't, we don't."

Even these community kitchens are now struggling to function. Ahmad Mansour, who supervises one such takiya in the Al-Mawasi area, says they've been forced to cut production from eight pots of food daily to just three due to supply shortages and soaring prices.

"We used to pay $500 for a load of firewood. Now it's over $1,000. Cooking oil that was $2 a litre is now $12. Even flour, which used to cost $10 for a 25-kilo sack, is now $150—if you can find it."

Mansour warns that communal kitchens may soon stop operating altogether unless borders reopen. "We're running out of everything. We are entering a period of real starvation."

UN agencies and NGOs have warned repeatedly of looming famine, particularly in the north, but conditions in the south are deteriorating rapidly as warehouses empty and markets collapse under pressure.

In earlier months, UNRWA's Khan Younis warehouse received near-daily shipments via the main aid corridor known as "Route 5." Crowds would gather along the road, hoping for a box of supplies to fall off a truck. Despite intermittent security threats and occasional attacks on convoys, the system functioned—until it didn't.

As he sits in the shade of a torn tarp, watching his youngest grandson bring back a warm flatbread from the takiya, Sheikh Al-Eid smiles, then quickly divides it among waiting children. "We survived the bombs," he says. "But this hunger? It's harder."

This piece was published in collaboration with Egab.